Are there liberals who admire St Paul?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

There are a great many people who are both liberals and Christians. This doesn't surprise me unduly - a lot of what Jesus is believed to have said himself strikes me as relatively liberal.

However, most Christians appear also to attach significance to the Old Testament and to the large chunks of the bible ascribed to St Paul or his influence, and I find it much harder to see how anyone can square those with liberal positions on social issues.

What do liberal Christians think about St Paul?

[LiberalArkie]

1. I feel more favorable about Judas than I do Paul or Moses.

[daleanime]

2. Well, we think it a shame....

think about all the music we could have had if the Beatles hadn't broken up.:evilgrin:

[Kurmudgeon]

3. I prefer to think of myself as a Christian instead of a Paulist.

[kestrel91316]

4. Paul was an insane hatemonger. He ruined Christianity.

[laconicsax]

7. He started Christianity. n/t

[trotsky]

5. They mostly ignore him, as they do with all the other parts of the bible they don't like.

Same with the right-wingers. Pick and choose. Of course, it could be easily argued that if it weren't for Paul, Christianity might not have even risen to the level of a historical footnote. All Christians, liberal and conservative, owe a debt to Paul.

[Boojatta]

6. "most Christians appear also to attach significance to the Old Testament"

What kind of significance do you have in mind?

Can you suggest a way to eliminate from the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) all references to the Old Testament without either making much of what is in the canonical gospels incomprehensible or cutting out or completely rewriting a lot of what is in the canonical gospels?

[struggle4progress]

8. I put a quote from Paul in my sigline. Saul of Tarsus was reputedly a rather intolerant

and self-satisfied man, who was willing to have people stoned to death for disagreeing with his religious views. He then reportedly experienced something, that we today might call "a psychiatric crisis" -- as a result of which he went under a different name, Paul, stopped stoning people to death, and began preaching instead love and forgiveness

The transformed man, Paul, is responsible for some of the most beautiful early Christian passages:

If I can speak all human tongues, or even the languages of angels, but have no love, I am just a noisy gong or a rattling cymbal. And if I can foresee the future and understand hidden things and possess all knowledge, or if I have enough faith to move mountains, but have no love, I am nothing. And even if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, or am willing allow my body to be burned, but have no love, there is no benefit. Love endures and is kind; love does not envy; love does not promote itself, is not vain, does not behave badly, does not seek its own advantage, is not easily provoked, imagines no evil, is not pleased by doing harm, but rather is pleased by truth ... When a child, I spoke like a child and understood like a child and thought like a child: but when adult I put away childish things ... So now there remain these three: faith, hope, and love -- but the greatest of them all is love

Not being scholar of these texts, I cannot vouch for the conclusions, but the so-called Pauline epistles seem to have been written by at least two, and probably by three or more different hands, and they do not all convey exactly the same message: those more certainly attributed to Paul seem rather more gracious and generous to me than the texts less certainly attributed. Persons quoting Paul to justify less gracious and less generous attitudes usually quote the texts less certainly attributed. Of course, this is not decisive in attempting to estimate accurately the man's views: the texts less certainly attributed might indeed be reporting attitudes that Paul himself held; after all, his former self Saul had been intolerant enough to approve stonings; but it is entirely clear that Paul was aware that no one understands everything clearly, as when he says for now we see through a glass, darkly

The story is interesting, in part because it suggests the potentially transformative role of "a psychiatric crisis." It is the story of one person's catastrophic realization that his self-righteousness is blind and childish and completely inadequate. I find he has something to say, worth hearing, and I find myself willing to listen to what he says -- though I do not need to agree with every word, nor need I regard him as blameless (as he surely did not consider himself blameless)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Right, linguistic evidence (the kind that philologists use to analyze the authorship of

secular literature) shows that the so-called letters of Paul were written by at least two people, maybe more, but there is a congruence of writing style among several of the major letters.